by Mary Balogh
The eastern sky was beginning to lighten, he noticed for the first time. When he peered cautiously through the trees, he could see horses and men at the water’s edge, and Leroux, still on his horse’s back, a short distance away. The captain lifted his rifle silently from the ground, braced himself on his elbows, and sighted along it, training it on the right temple of the colonel. Another horse sidled up on the far side of him.
“It would make more sense to travel alone or with only one or two others,” Colonel Leroux said. “We can never hope to surprise them with the noise this company makes, can we? God, I hate this sort of warfare. They have all the advantages in this type of country, those damned partisans.”
“But traveling in a large group is the only way to protect ourselves,” the other man said. “They would think twice before attacking a whole company, Colonel. Your life would not be worth the snap of two fingers if you traveled alone.”
“If they have touched one hair of the marquesa’s head,” the colonel said, “they will all die—very slowly. The Englishman most slowly of all. I will strip him of his uniform and swear, if there are any questions, that he was not wearing one. And then I shall strip him of his flesh, one painful inch at a time. I shall do it personally.”
Joana had turned her head to one side and was looking at him, Captain Blake knew, though he did not take his eyes off the colonel for even one moment. Doubtless she was gloating over what she was hearing.
“They could even be hiding here,” the other man said. “They know the country better than we do. They would have known about this water.”
“There is not enough cover,” the colonel said as Captain Blake tensed and his finger steadied on the trigger of his rifle. “There are at least a dozen of them.”
“Unless they split into smaller groups,” the other man said.
“With a whole company of the best soldiers in the world after them?” the colonel said scornfully. “They would have to be foolish in the extreme.”
“Or clever,” the other man said.
“Time is up,” the colonel said impatiently. “We must move on. We need food and there were only the two farms yesterday. Besides, I intend to pick up her trail today. It has been too long. She is such a delicate little thing.”
He moved his own horse down into the water as the rest of his men were recalled and formed up to resume their journey. Captain Blake’s rifle followed the colonel. They were mad not to search, he thought. It was such an obvious camping place. But there was very little shelter. He owed his survival, he knew—if he did survive; the Frenchmen had not moved off yet—to the fact that Colonel Leroux assumed that he and Joana and Duarte Ribeiro’s band had stayed together. All of them could not possibly have hidden in this valley.
He did not lay his rifle down until the last man had disappeared over the top of the opposite bank and until the sound of hoofbeats had died completely away. Then he laid it down carefully and set his forehead against it. He knew from long experience as a soldier that the cold sweat and the thumping heart and the weakened knees and the dizziness came only after the danger was over. He knew also that they were best dealt with by giving in to them for a brief spell. He drew deep slow breaths.
The darkness was lifting fast. It was easy to see the hatred and the fury in Joana’s eyes when he raised his head to look at her. He released her wrists from the leather belt first and then undid the knot of the handkerchief.
And she was on him like a fury, her fists pounding his chest and crashing into his face, her legs and feet kicking him, her teeth bared in a snarl.
“You bastard!” she hissed at him. “You bloody, bloody imbecile. I hate you. I wish they had cut you down with a hundred bullets. No, I wish they had taken you alive. I would have asked Marcel to let me watch them strip away your flesh. I would have listened to your screams. I would have laughed at you while you were still sane enough to know that I was laughing.”
The words came jerking out of her piecemeal while they fought. He tried to imprison her arms at her sides, but she was kicking him painfully in the shins, and then he squirmed away only just in time when she brought up her knee sharply.
“Have done, Joana,” he ordered her. “You have me at a disadvantage. I cannot hit you back.”
“But you can bind my hands behind me and gag me,” she said, lifting her head to try to bite the hand that had clamped onto one of her wrists. “You bully. You bloody coward. Hit me! Fight me properly. Don’t hold me. Don’t hold me! Hit me if you dare. I want to fight you. Coward. Bully. Bastard.”
He released his hold on her wrist and slapped with stinging force at the leg that was kicking him. His anger was up at last. Perhaps they both needed release from the tension of the past half-hour. He jumped to his feet, grasping both her arms firmly and lifting her up with him. He unbuckled his sword belt and threw it from him with her knife.
“If it is a fight you want,” he told her grimly, “then I am your man, Joana. Hit for hit. Come on.”
She came at his chest with her fists and he reached around her to smack her ungently on one buttock. She drew back and punched his chin with a closed fist. He slapped one of her cheeks smartly. She kicked at his shin and he caught her leg before she could return it to the ground, almost throwing her off-balance, and slapped it with an open palm.
She stood before him panting loudly, her bosom heaving, her eyes flashing, looking for an opening through which to attack him.
“I wish . . .” she said after a few moments. “Oh, I wish I could have the strength of a man for just ten minutes. I would not stop until I had beaten you insensible.” Her hands were opening and closing into fists at her sides. “But this is humiliating. You are not fighting me. You are playing with me. I should have a broken jaw and two black eyes by now. Hit me, damn you! Fight, you coward.”
He looked at her reddened cheek and took her suddenly by the shoulders and drew her hard against him. “I can imagine how it must feel, Joana,” he said, “to have been so close to freedom, to have seen and heard your chance gallop away into the distance. Have done now. There is no point in raging.”
“Oh, God,” she said, her face pressed to his coat, “he was so close. I could almost have touched him. And my musket not two feet off. I may never see him again. I may have lost my chance forever.”
“Hush,” he said, one hand coming up to stroke the back of her head.
“Hush?” Her head came up and her eyes were still blazing. “How can I hush? I want to fight you, and you will not fight. I wish I were not a woman. Oh, I wish and wish I were a man. You would regret the day you were born if I were a man.”
“Yes, I would.” Both his tension and his anger had dissipated, he realized suddenly, and he could not resist grinning down at her. “I would be embarrassed and horrified too to be holding you like this if you were a man, Joana, and feeling as I am feeling.”
She was still panting. Her breasts were heaving against his chest. “You might have been dead,” she said, “and I was trussed up so soundly that I could not have lifted a finger to help you or uttered a word in your defense. And now all you can think of is making love, you fool. You imbecile!”
“Where did you learn your language?” he asked her. “You must have made a few trips to the gutter, Joana.”
“I wish I knew more,” she said. “My repertoire of foul words is lamentably small. I need more to hurl at your head. If we cannot fight, let us make love, then. But don’t you dare try to do it quickly or gently, Robert. I want it rough. And I don’t want you asking if the ground is hard. I want to fight you—for pleasure.”
It was madness. There was a war to be fought and orders to be carried out. There was an explosion to investigate and a whole company of French soldiers not far off, all looking for him so that their colonel might have the pleasure of parting him first from his uniform and then from his skin and finally from his life.
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sp; It was madness. And yet all he could think of for the next several minutes—he had no idea how many passed—was rolling and panting and growling on the ground, giving and receiving pleasure and pain in equal portions, making love with his bitterest enemy. Making love for the fifth time in little more than twenty-four hours—and trying to convince himself that it was merely a physical thing, that it was just sex, that there were no feelings involved at all.
He wondered if he was fooling her as poorly as he was fooling himself.
“Oh, Robert,” she said, flat on her back on the ground a few minutes after it was all over, turning her head to look at him, “you do that most awfully well, you know. I must be bruises all over, inside and out. I feel wonderful.”
“And better?” he said. “The anger worked off?”
“He will find me,” she said. “And in the meantime I have you to give me pleasure. I must go and wash. Permission to absent myself for five minutes, sir?”
“I’ll come with you,” he said, sitting up and wishing for a bath or at least for a bathe. But alas, there was not enough water—or enough time. The day was going to be a tricky one now that they would be pursuing their pursuers.
“I was planning to take my clothes off,” she said, smiling archly at him. “You will not be embarrassed, Robert?”
He snorted and she laughed lightly before turning to run down to the stream. Like a faun. Like a light-footed beautiful faun, without a care in the world, perfectly in tune with her surroundings.
God, she was a strange woman, he thought, going after her. A strange and wonderful woman. Equally at home as the refined and exquisite Marquesa das Minas and as the earthy and wild Joana Ribeiro, as she liked to call herself. A lifetime would not be long enough even to begin to know her. And all he had was a few days. Well, he would make the most of those days. He would pack a lifetime of experience into them.
He frowned as he caught the direction of his thoughts.
* * *
They had not gone far before they could hear the steady booming of guns. Almeida was being bombarded with a constant shelling. Only one hill had stood between them and the sound, faint at first, felt more than heard, and then quite distinct to the ear.
“Is it like this in battle?” Joana asked, hurrying up beside Captain Blake. “Someone told me that the sound of the guns is the most frightening part.”
“Especially when they are directed right at you,” he said, “and you cannot step out of the way because if you do the line will break and the enemy infantry will be through it and will win the day. You have to stand—like a sitting duck.”
“But at least there is the line,” she said. “Other men to either side of you for a sort of protection. But you go out in front of the line, do you not? You and your riflemen are skirmishers? That must be far more terrifying.”
“No,” he said. “At least we have something to do instead of just standing waiting for the enemy column to come up so that the guns will stop and the real killing begin.”
“It is madness,” she said. “War is madness.”
“But a necessary one,” he said. “There is no point in saying, as so many people do, especially ladies who spend their days in perfumed drawing rooms, that we should all love one another and learn to get along with one another. Life is not like that.”
“And would it not be dull,” she said, “if it were? We would not have had that delicious fight this morning, Robert. I did enjoy it, though I did not enjoy what provoked it. I have no taste for being bound and gagged. Have you ever struck a woman before?”
“No,” he said. “And don’t expect me to apologize, Joana.”
She chuckled and fell back a few paces again. Her foot was hurting like the devil, but she would not allow herself the luxury of limping while she was in his sight.
They saw no sign of Colonel Leroux and his company of horsemen, though they approached the crest of every hill with caution. The Frenchmen must have galloped straight to Almeida and joined Marshal Ney’s forces, he told her.
“Perhaps they imagine you are inside, Joana,” he said. “He will be preparing to rescue you.”
“Those poor women who are inside,” she said, “if the fortress is taken and does not surrender. It will be sacked and they will all be raped before they are killed.” She shuddered.
“Perhaps Cox will surrender,” he said. “Though I doubt it. He has a reputation for stubbornness.”
“And Marcel will be in there with the rest,” she said, “raping them and then ordering them killed. You should have shot him this morning, Robert.”
“And offered my body to the rest of the company for target practice?” he said. “He’ll not harm any woman, Joana. He is an officer and bound to try to impose discipline on his men, not lead the way into savagery. Besides, he has a mission. He is looking for you.”
“Yes.” She shuddered again and was once more glad that she was behind him.
They approached the crest of one more hill cautiously. The sound of the guns was almost deafening. Joana felt a deep, knee-weakening terror, though she would not have admitted as much for worlds. Captain Blake reached back a hand and drew her down to the ground. And they edged up side by side and found themselves looking down on hell.
The plain before the fortress was thick with the blue uniforms of the French, just beyond the reach of the guns on the walls—what was left of them. A good half of the city was either in flames or in smoking, blackened ruins. No simple shelling could possibly have done such damage, surely. But something had happened. Something that had woken them that morning, even though they had been out of earshot of the guns.
“Jesus!” Captain Blake said beside her. “The main magazine must have blown. The bloody fools must have had the ammunition in a place where a French shell could set it all off. It must have been the grandest fireworks display the world has witnessed.”
“They must all be dead,” she said, gazing at the ruins and at the gaping breaches in the walls with mingled horror and fascination. “And yet some are alive and fighting on. Why do they not surrender?”
“At a guess, because Cox is one of the survivors,” he said. “Bloody magnificent fool. But it cannot hold out long. Hours, probably. A day perhaps. No longer. So much for the Beau’s hope that Almeida would hold up your countrymen until the autumn rains. August is not even quite out yet, and the rains are at least a month off.”
She was gripping the scrubby grass on either side of her. “Do you think there were children inside there?” she asked. “Or would they have been evacuated? There are dead children in there, Robert.”
He turned his head sharply to look at her. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Put your head down. Stop looking.”
“And that will make everything all right?” she said. “It will not matter that there are dead children down there as long as I do not look? I live a frivolous and pampered life, Robert. I have never been this close to death on a large scale before.”
She scrambled down behind the hill suddenly on all fours and retched onto the ground. And humiliation took the place of horror and grief. She could not seem to stop her stomach from heaving.
“Go away!” she said sharply when she heard him come up behind her. “Leave me alone.”
“Joana.” One broad hand came to rest against her back. “It is all right to vomit. There is nothing shameful about it. I don’t know a soldier, myself included, who did not chuck up his last meal at his first encounter with death. Some do it routinely at every battle. There is nothing unmanly—or unwomanly—about it.”
“It is just disgusting,” she said, her face cold and clammy. “Go away.”
He was sitting just below the top of the rise, facing away from her, when she had cleaned herself up as well as she could and felt that the moment of facing him again could be avoided no longer.
“You were stupid to turn your back,�
�� she said. “How did you know I would not be running down the slope toward the army?”
“It did cross my mind,” he said, turning to look at her. “Except that I don’t think you could run if hounds were at your heels, Joana. Let me see that foot.”
“It is all right,” she said with a shrug. “Don’t fuss, Robert, like an old nanny.”
“I think I would prefer ‘bastard’ and ‘imbecile,’” he said, “and even ‘coward.’ And ‘eunuch,’ I believe it was once? Your foot.” He held out a hand that was not to be denied. She placed her foot next to it and he lifted it and clucked his tongue. “So you were limping. I thought you were, but I knew I would have a fight on my hands if I commented on the fact.”
Her strap had kept slipping up all day so that the inside of her heel, from ankle to sole, was red and raw. He drew his handkerchief out of his pocket.
“It is clean,” he said, “unless you spat on it this morning.” He bound it snugly about her foot as if he were used to administering such services—and he probably was, she thought. “It will not help a great deal, but it will prevent any more rubbing or any more dust getting at it. Perhaps the woman at the farm where we stopped for a meal earlier—a pity you could not keep that meal down, Joana, considering the fact that it was our one and only today—perhaps she will have some ointment. And perhaps we can stay there for the night.”
“We just walk away?” she asked, looking to the top of the hill and marveling at how one quickly became almost accustomed to the booming of the guns.
“There is nothing we can do for those poor bastards down there,” he said. “There is no point in wasting energies where they can do no good, Joana. In the meantime we have work to do—I have work to do. And there is no time for delay. By tomorrow Almeida will either fall or surrender. Perhaps even today or tonight. I have to make sure that the people between here and Lisbon get safely away and destroy the supply lines ahead of the French. They will be on their way soon—once they have done some suitable rejoicing over the fall of Almeida. The gates into Portugal are wide open. We can hardly expect them not to come pouring in, can we?”